Molly Dancing to Peter and the Wolf

In addition to the video, here are Molly's latest thoughts...

Yesterday, Molly colored a picture that included a star and a Christmas tree.  As she narrated the story behind the picture she told us, "I think Jesus is happy because I wrote a Christmas story."

The day before that, Molly was thinking about sharks.  Possibly they have been learning about sharks in preschool?  I'm not sure.  She turned to me and said, "Good thing there are nurse sharks so that if any shark gets hurt, they have someone to make them better."  She paused for awhile to think about this, and then added, "Mom, are nurse sharks evil?"

Emily is a Month Old

 

Emily was a month old on Monday.  She already looks so different from when she was born, and is clearly growing very quickly.  She still fits into most of her 0-3 month clothes, but we’ve gotten out all the 6 month clothes and she fits into those too. I’m not sure that we have real smiles from her yet, but the edges of her mouth are starting to turn up, and her eyes will track the Itsy Bitsy Spider if you do the motions while you sing.

She also is eroding Austin’s hopes of early potty training because she has stopped going to the bathroom every time her diaper is off.  At first it was like clockwork—she waited to go potty till her diaper was off—and gave her daddy the idea that he would be able to train her as soon as she could hold up her head.  Riiight.

She is already so much better than either of her older siblings at taking a bottle, which is very nice for me.  Unfortunately, nursing has been challenging lately because she has reflux and arches her backs and screams in pain during feedings.  Pumping bottles makes feeding her out of the house possible.  Of course given our allergic track record as a family we are looking into whether the reflux is made worse by an allergy.  I personally am guessing it’s cow’s milk so I’m now dairy free, at least for awhile.  I think it’s helping but it’s only been a couple days and babies are so erratic from day to day, so am withholding judgment.

She is a great sleeper; her record so far is going 7 hours without feeding.  What a star.  The only time she is not a great sleeper is when she gets overtired.  Beware, lest she not sleep between feedings: she becomes a very good screamer.  Poor kid, when she’s too tired, she is inconsolable. 

Emily is treasured by her big sister.  Molly feels very proprietary over what Emily wears every day.  Molly will also stop whatever she’s doing to watch Emily take a bath.  Molly threw a fit yesterday that I didn’t let her look at Emily’s eyes to check if they were open or closed (note, I had asked her three times to get dressed for preschool and we were late….)  She also has a fascination with me pumping bottles.  (I haven’t figured that one out and hope that fascination will end soon.) 

Molly regularly tells me things like, “Mom, don’t you LOVE having a baby?”  And I do.  Being with Emily is absolutely delightful. 

   

Quotes of the Day

*Yesterday Molly dressed up in her white tutu.  When she wears that tutu I tell her she looks like a snowflake ballerina.  She said, “Mommy, I don’t want to be a snowflake princess ballerina.  Today I am the sparkle on a moon beam.”

*Molly told me last week: “I love you as much as God does.”

*And then the other day she came up to me with a furrowed brow and worried expression, very concerned about her latest career dilemma.  “Mom, when I grow up I want to be a princess.  But being a nurse would be super fun too.”  She sighed as she said this, as if facing an impossible choice.

Welcome, Emily!

 

Here are some pictures to satisfy the newly formed Emily fan club.  She is helping me pick her best shots right now as I type (totally conked out on my chest).  I could put her down—she sleeps fine without being held, but it’s hard to put such a snuggly little one down.  Especially when you have a seven year-old running around and you realize how amazingly short this time is.

Emily is an easy baby so far.  She is good at nursing, but also not as voracious as our other two—which is nice for me at nights.  This may change as she wakes up more, but I remember calling Molly my little barracuda even in the hospital.  Emily is typically more interested in sleeping and often makes me work to get her to eat a full feeding.

She is delightfully scrunchy, with the most exquisitely soft hair and skin.  It’s funny that she was 8 lbs 8 oz—that’s our biggest baby so far—but she seems absolutely tiny to me. 

Here are her greatest hits so far:

 

Molly’s Thoughts on Life

On Charlottesville…

As we drove south out of Charlottesville, Molly looked out the car window down a hill in a small section of Charlottesville called Belmont.  I guess from the hill she could see pretty far because she gasped and asked…

Molly: Is that New York City??!!

On her grandmother:

Molly: Did GoGo come over on the Mayflower?

Me: No, the Mayflower was a long time before GoGo.

Molly: I think GoGo came over on the Mayflower because she was on a big ship instead of coming to my birthday party.

On kicking:

Occasionally, Molly and Tucker have some problems getting along.  Tucker came to tell Austin one day last week that Molly had kicked him.

Austin: Molly, did you kick Tucker?

Molly: No.

Austin: Tucker, what do you say happened?

Tucker launched into a long explanation of their latest sibling spat.  When he got to the part about Molly kicking him, he enacted what happened… but apparently not well enough because Molly started miming what she had done in the background to clarify..  Turns out her kick had more knee and more force than Tucker was giving her credit for and she needed to set the record state….  Sometimes it’s hard to discipline with a straight face!

On marriage:

Molly was sitting in the chair in Austin’s office while he worked, and she was mumbling about something or other.  Austin finally figured out that she was telling him about her marriage dilemma. 

Molly: I just don’t know who to marry!

Austin: Do you know a lot of boys you want to marry?

Molly: No.

Austin: What’s the problem, then?

Molly: I don’t want to marry anyone older than me, and I don’t want to marry anyone younger than me and I don’t know anyone who was born on the same day!

[Once Austin established that people don’t have to be born on the same day to marry, Molly quickly decided she’d marry her friend Lukey who is all of 7 weeks her senior.]

Sibling Love

I overheard Molly and Tucker playing last night.

Molly: When we are grownups, I will marry you.  And I will follow you wherever you go!

Awwww…..

Quote of the Day

“Look what my fairy godparents gave me!” –Molly, holding a new icon that her godparents gave her to celebrate the anniversary of her baptism today

Molly’s Favorite Phrase

“What’s that smell?” –Molly

I hear this question at least five times a day.  The funny thing is that I’m the last person she should be asking what a smell is because I have allergies and am almost always stuffed up or sneezing. 

In other news, I’ve been working on how to take studio-esque pictures at home.  I really do like the posed kind of studio pictures, but the ones we got home from each kid’s school last year didn’t even look like them.  Then Molly was sick this year and missed her pictures and my commitment to hauling her somewhere to take a yearly picture has been very low.  So I’ve been experimenting with lighting and backdrops and came up with an easy set up that gave us some great pictures. 

Molly was soooo much easier to take good pictures of than Tucker.  Tucker has a fake camera smile that makes his eyes bug out, so he was quite the challenge.  I got a million great ones of Molly… and one of Tucker that was okay.  But the ones of the two kids together melt me. 

Here are some of Molly’s out-takes (I know, the lighting isn’t quite right on some of them but since they’re out-takes I didn’t take the time to correct it)…

 

And here are Tucker and Molly’s out-takes… see what a good influence Tucker is on the picture-taking process???  :)

 

Quote of the Day

“Daddy is a soft touch because he lets me eat carrots whenever I want!” -Molly

Quote of the Day

“I think the skunk is following us.” –Molly

[Molly is convinced every off smell that she ever smells is a skunk.  And if it doesn’t pass quickly, the skunk is following us!]

Molly is Four

Molly officially turned four last week, but it sure has felt like she’s been four for awhile in terms of the way she acts.  I love the times when she’s still little—she still loves to snuggle and still sleeps with her lovey in her mouth (“mouth bunny” she calls it).  But I also have flashes of time when I feel like she’s a teen in training already, like when she tells me “Mom, don’t say THAT!”  This year, she was obsessed with all things birthday, so she started “writing” invitations to her birthday party back in June.  It involved using any notecards she could find around the house, and scribbling/writing random letters on them while she narrated phrases like “Dear Lukie, you are SO special, I love playing with you.  Please come to my party. Love, Molly.”  She changed up the messages she was writing for each friend. 

By the time Tucker’s birthday came and went in September, birthday anticipation had reached fever pitch in my favorite soon-to-be-four-year-old.  All in all, big non-family birthday parties aren’t my favorite thing and I will work on convincing the kids that maybe next year we’ll plan favorite outings with favorite friends instead… but this year I didn’t even have the heart to offer her an alternative to a birthday party, she was so excited about this one.  Of course, the other great thing about four year-old birthdays is that the parents stay and that the kids are totally happy with free play.  This year I buried some whistles in plastic bags in the sandbox (treasure) and we strung Apple Jacks, pretzels and gummy lifesavers on string to make necklaces.  That was about the extent of party prep.  Unless you count making an all-orange bunny cake because as Molly will tell anyone who will listen, orange is her favorite color.

Molly at four is very, very into me and wants to be my sidekick at all time.  She is very vocal about her opinions about just about everything, her opinion is not easily changed, and she is not easily distracted.  Last night I closed her door after I put her to bed and she was mad because she wanted me to keep it open.  She immediately opened it, but then proceeded to wait 30 or 40 minutes while I took a bath just so that when I came out of my room again she could tell me (again) that she was sad because I had closed her door initially (and demand another kiss).  Man, that type of sulking takes concentration!

Her favorite thing these days is ballet.  She loooooves her ballet class.  At her class’ visitors day last week, I was shocked at just how enthusiastic she was in that class—I believe she was the only little girl who answered any question.  She also told her instructor at least four times that her favorite color was orange, and other useful bits of info like her brother is 7. 

Molly loves letters and writing and crafts and has a long attention span.  This morning after we dropped Tucker at school she came home and begged me to help her write her thank you cards for her party.  She was on her fourth one before she got bored.  I wish I felt the same way about thank you cards!  She is very excited about becoming a big sister and is already specifying what the baby is going to be doing.  I think she may be disappointed with how little babies actually do at first….

One of my favorite conversations with her lately:

Me: What’s your last name?

Molly: Bug.

Me: Bug?

Molly: Yes, bug.  Molly June BUG.

 

I love you, my favorite Molly June Bug!

Happy Birthday, Tucker

 

My newly-minted 7 year-old is keeping things close-lipped in these pictures, but if you saw his grin, he’s missing his two front teeth.  His favorite things now are sports, sports, and sports.  After his birthday party, he told me that his favorite part were the races—not the treasure hunt, obstacle course, cake, pinata, balloon fights, etc…  Anything that lets him run as fast as he can, and preferably win, is Tucker’s favorite right now.  He has decided that he wants to go to UVa and run on the track team for college, because you can win more medals and trophies in a sport like track than in a team sport like basketball, though he does plan on playing basketball professionally when he grows up.  One great thing about Tucker is that he does love to practice and doesn’t seem to mind putting in the work.  He loves to go out to the shed and workout with Austin. It took awhile, but Tucker is now a competent bike rider who likes to go fast (I do appreciate that he remains risk-averse…).  (Molly is thrilled to have Tucker’s smaller cast-off bike with training wheels.)

Tucker sometimes seems so old, but on his birthday he went to bed wearing new superman pajamas, clutching a helium balloon, totally excited about $20 worth of Matchbox car plastic tracks.  It made me thankful he’s not THAT big yet.

In terms of his party, I tried desperately to get him to take us up on an expedition to a UVa football game, or a waterpark, or a trampoline place (all offers included a friend) rather than doing a full-out party.  It didn’t work.  But we agreed on inviting 7 friends since he’s 7—of which only 5 could come.  Perfect number.  He had a great time, and I wasn’t scarred like last year.  But maybe next year the non-party option will be the winner??  I can hope, right?